Can Experienced Cyclists Be At Fault?

Pross

Following on from a debate on another thread which was an inappropriate place for it and several thread recently where people have automatically jumped to the conclusion that a motorist was the cause of a fatal collision with a cyclist I just wanted to guage opinion from all you experienced cyclists on here as to whether it is possible that an experienced cyclist can be responsible for such a collision.

The main comment that got me asking this is Dilemna's post, particularly the first paragraph, below (which I have copied in full to avoid any accussation of taking things out of context or putting together a straw man argument):-

Yep certainly where motons are concerned. The cyclist who was killed was I believe a very exerienced "proper" cyclist. All the very "experienced" proper cyclists on here, if you were knocked down would it be because it WAS your fault? When I was knocked down a car drove straight into the back of me taking me down. The f*cker then lied through his f*ckin teeth that I had ridden (backwards, yep backwards) into him. The police arrested and charged him with careless driving and he was subsequently found guilty. But there were two excellent witnesses that saw him run me down. But more often there are no witnesses and injured or dead cyclists receive very poor justice - oh just another cyclist. The fact that some one a dad, brother, son, Mum, sister, daughter has been killed and the driver has driven off or had lied through their teeth to escape prosecution or conviciton is of little consequence.

This country is so lenient on motons it's unreal. I believe the driver in this incident was arrested on suspicion of careless/reckless driving. Yes they are innocent until proven guilty but this is only a matter of time until convicted (They'll probably get off through lying or on a technicality). Experienced competent cyclists simply don't crash and die if no one has crashed into them unless they have an underlying medical issue which wasn't, I understand, the case in this death. Nope I believe many motons are appalling drivers and when caught they will use any means fair or foul to get off. How about Range Rover woman having driven into a woman cyclist killing her then colliding with her cycling husband, then crashing into another car and finally demolishing a roundabout claimed that her actions were not due to dangerous driving or using a mobile whilst driving but due to some medical condition that she could not remember what happened. How convenient, how very convenient. So she gets off.

I say string 'em up. The more the better. Let that be a deterrent to others for driving like morons and killing other road users and cyclists. Approx 3000 people are killed on the roads every year. Some bloody stupid air head on R4 his morning was suggesing that minimum alcohol pricing would save 21 lives a year. Well if these 21 people would prefer to drink themselves to death then let them, concentrate instead on saving some of the 3000 lives lost on the roads each year. A start can made made by stringing up dangerous motons who kill cyclists. End of rant.

My own opinion is that anyone can make a mistake / error of judgement whether driving or cycling and I know I have done so using both modes of transport. Luckily they have never resulted in injury to anyone else or any serious injury to me but in another place at another time they could easily have done.

Do I think that sentencing is too lenient? Yes, when a driver is found guilty it's my normal reaction (though, like most, I don't know the full facts of a case). However, I really find the implication that any collision involving an experienced cyclist is almost certainly the driver's fault a very dangerous assumption. I also find it incredible the number of people on here who straight away assume that a driver getting arrested for causing death by careless driving means that they were guilty of careless driving. I'm not a legal expert but I believe that arresting the driver is pretty much a means of questioning them under oath and that there may not even be any suggestion that they committed the crime they are arrested for.

Drysuitdiver

agreed. no matter how experienced you are, how well maintained the machine. the unexpected can happen and the mistake gets made.

sadly its usually at that moment all the factors add together and you get a major injury/fatality.

the same goes for Car, Bus, Lorry drivers. Pilots of aeroplanes , helmsmen on ships ad infinitum.

you are correct in the arrest methosds as one of the words is Suspicion. its an effective menas of detaining somebody so they don't do a midnight flit.
if after interview etc there are no grounds to be charged then you will be de-arrested and released.

we have one of the best Justice systems iin the world.

tebbit

I agree with the above, it is possible for experienced cyclists to make mistakes, misjudge situations we are fallible and mistakes are made, we are more vulnerable to other road users.

Omar Little

Everyone can make mistakes and have lapses of judgement - even experienced cyclists (or drivers for that matter). The difference is when a cyclist has a major error the consequences to them and other individuals are very different to that of someone driving a car and making a major error. Its like trying to cut something with a camping knife without first locking the blade (in other words the danger is going to be with the person using the knife and making the mistake) versus accidentally pulling the trigger on a loaded gun while pointing it randomly (as a result the potential danger is spread much further than just the person making the mistake)

ellieb

Of course. Everyone can make a mistake.. The point is that the in the overwhelming majority of these cases when the cyclist is blamed it is the car driver who is at fault.

Pross

ellieb wrote:

Of course. Everyone can make a mistake.. The point is that the in the overwhelming majority of these cases when the cyclist is blamed it is the car driver who is at fault.

Is it though? If I can get the information I may do a bit of research into cycling KSI incidence to get a clearer picture (for professional interest as well as personal). Most of us (myself included) probably believe that in the majority of vehicle v bike collisions the vehicle is at fault (although I'm not so convinced it is an overwhelming majority) but I haven't seen anything to support my instincts on this. There will also be grey areas e.g. if a cyclist filters down the left of a row of traffic an ends up getting hit by a left turning vehicle that has been in front of them all along and has been indicating then who is to blame? I also accept Omar's comment that cyclists errors or judgement are unlikely to result injury to others. However, my argument is that you can make an error that results in you ending up in a collision with a vehicle where they are not to blame (an example I gave in a previous thread was that I pulled out of a roundabout and went to clip into my pedals, the pedal was the wrong way round and my foot slipped off leaving me swerving into the path of a car. Fortunately, in this case, I managed to regain my balance and the motorist avoided me but had I fallen I would have been under their wheels.

sfichele

Obviously, we need to be careful that the cause of an accident is properly understood and no one is blamed automatically. But when drivers do screw up then the consequences aren't good, and in those cases its usually the cyclists that gets the raw deal.

Crucially as a cyclist you have to take a _lot_ of responsibility for you own saftey. But the annoying thing is this: in doing so, you feel cheated if a driver hits you or cuts you up,
because there are you being careful, whereas it feels like they couldn't give a rats... and then people wonder why we angry about poor driving.

The thing that really gets my goat is the lack of public awareness and the lack of any national campaigns to rectify it! Discussing blame and all that is too late after an accident. What we need is less of them! With both cyclists and motorists being more considerate

Pross

The thing that really gets my goat is the lack of public awareness and the lack of any national campaigns to rectify it! Discussing blame and all that is too late after an accident. What we need is less of them! With both cyclists and motorists being more considerate

Couldn't agree more. The only response we seem to have is to give cyclists their own space (building cycle lanes, providing routes for cyclists around a roundabout etc.) but this really shouldn't be the case, it should be "how do we make the existing space safe for cyclists to co-exist with motor vehicles?". The question regarding blame has just come from a few threads on tragic deaths recently where some forumites have jumped to the conclusion that the motorists were at fault. I'm seriously thinking about doing a bit of research into this with a view to writing a paper, could be an interesting subject to establish the likely causes of cycling accidents and look at ways to improve the situation although I'm sure it's been done before. The comment about a lack of campaigns is interesting too, especially when you see quite a few regarding motorbikes.

DrewDubya

Building on Pross' original post you could also conjecture that when an experienced cyclist makes a mistake resulting in an accident (ie the cyclist is at fault, whether deliberately or accidentally) it is more likely to be a worse accident

This would simply be a combination of where you would be cycling and how (in terms of speed, road positioning etc.)

If this hypothesis is correct then you end up with "
serious accidents involve experienced cyclists more often than inexperienced ones" and therefore "experienced cyclists more often at fault in serious accidents than inexperienced cyclists"

which probably does not help the non-cycling public's view of accidents involving cyclists


Perhaps even more interestingly the same logic (probably) does not apply to drivers - where I would believe that inexperienced drivers are more often involved in, and at fault for, serious accidents. (I think this data is well known) - which is an interesting and different debate

sfichele

If this hypothesis is correct then you end up with "
serious accidents involve experienced cyclists more often than inexperienced ones" and therefore "experienced cyclists more often at fault in serious accidents than inexperienced cyclists"

I think that may be a jump too far. Like pross says, it would be good to actually have real stats about accidents and not hypothesise.

DrewDubya

Completely agree - that's why it is a hypothesis. Then you use data to accept or reject it, or in sharing a hypothesis some-one may come up with an alternative which you choose to test - so it leads to debate that, hopefully, is not too clouded by opinions.

langster

To err is human......but to moo is bovine

Pross

I've found a TRL report that will be of interest but needs quite a bit of reading. Some interesting points I've picked out quickly:-

(Unsurprisingly) junctions are the biggest location for cyclist KSI accidents but what did surprise me was that of the 60% of these that had a contributing factor of "didn't look properly" but 57% of those were the motorist not looking properly and 43% were cyclists not looking properly.

Second biggest type of accident after those at junctions were people entering the road from the footway.

Of the 430 cyclists killed during the study period 17% (73) were in accidents where there was no collision with another vehicle and 3 were killed in collisions with pedestrians!

85% of those killed were male and the highest age group killed was 55 - 59 (slightly ahead of 10 - 15).

Of cases where a contributory factor was recorded 183 were recorded against a cyclist, 71 against drivers of cars and 56 against drivers of goods vehicles so whilst this doesn't cover all the accidents there's strong evidence that the cyclist contributes in a large number of cycling fatalities. Oddly, an Australian study has suggested that motorists are to blame in 90% of collisions with cyclists which is probably more in keeping with the instincts of most of us on here.

zippypablo

of the 183 recorded as the cyclist being at fault, how many of them were the drivers saying that with no other witnesses? If the cyclist has been killed then they can't give their version of events! Blame at an RTC can be quite subjective. It's probably quite difficult to get accurate figures.

sfichele

Interesting stuff - Is the report online or accessible? Would like to read it.

Pross

zippypablo wrote:

of the 183 recorded as the cyclist being at fault, how many of them were the drivers saying that with no other witnesses? If the cyclist has been killed then they can't give their version of events! Blame at an RTC can be quite subjective. It's probably quite difficult to get accurate figures.

True but it's from the STATS19 data that the police complete. I suspect (and maybe one of our resident coppers can advise on this) that if there is not any evidence / 3rd party witnesses then they would not enter any CFs on the form.

sfichele, it's TRL Report PPR445 and can be downloaded free of charge but you may have to register first (I can only find a 4 page summary of the PDF elsewhere).

sfichele

Found it, just reading now....

ellieb

Well according to Bike Radar:
http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/d ... ents-28489
http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/a ... ents-24481

The 2nd link is relevant to this deabate as it is age related.

The report also detailed where police had attributed the main 'contributory factor' in motorist/cyclist collisions (with age ranges categorised slightly differently here). In every age sector over 24 years old, driver behaviour was deemed the main contributory factor, and in age categories under 24, cyclist behaviour was considered largely to blame.

& since we are discussing experienced cyclists...

Pross

The first report is the Aussie study I referred to and the other report is the TRL report I am currently reading in full. I haven't seen anything in the TRL report to suggest that motorists are at fault in the overwhelming number of cases though. The breakdown is (from interpolation of the graphs):-

0 - 15 80% cyclist, 5% both, 15% driver
16 - 24 60% cyclist, 25% both, 15% driver
25 - 39 30% cyclist, 15% both, 55% driver
40 - 54 25% cyclist, 10% both, 65% driver
55 - 99 40% cyclist, 10% both, 50% driver

All age groups 45% cyclist, 10% both, 45% driver.

The figures suggest that experience helps reduce the number of cyclists at fault but even at the "safest" age group cyclists are at least partially responsible in 35% of cases.

sfichele

One thing I really dont like about these stats is the 0-15 age group, where the conclusion, because of the way stats are created by the police, indicates that its the child's fault.

In some cases this may be true BUT as a car driver (myself) you always have to be on the look out of children doing dumb things. I can accept that this many accidents happen because of kids leaving the pavement, but I can't accept that its always the kids fault.

sfichele

All age groups 45% cyclist, 10% both, 45% driver.

It's surprising and interesting that proportion attributed to cyclists is so high. However, with my above comment, I can't totally believe your final boiled-down stats because the child stats skew the data!

of the 183 recorded as the cyclist being at fault, how many of them were the drivers saying that with no other witnesses? If the cyclist has been killed then they can't give their version of events! Blame at an RTC can be quite subjective. It's probably quite difficult to get accurate figures.

I can't blindly accept 80% cyclist for the 0-15 age group

Pross

Remember that these are "contributing factors" so to use them to aportion blame is unfair really. However, the report goes quite a way to disproving the suggestion I quoted in the OP that an experienced cyclist is unlikely to be at fault in a collision.

shouldbeinbed

Carla Swart - South African girl on the HTC Columba womens team was killed the other day, she appears to have turned round on the road to pick up her computer that had dropped off and straight into the path of a truck that did its damndest to stop and avoid hitting her.

not only experienced but professional cyclists can have a catastrophic moment

http://road.cc/content/news/29707-south ... ining-ride

Hoopdriver

Apparently she looked over the wrong shoulder (left) before doing her U-turn - as she would were she in the US where she had done lots of racing and training. In South Africa, of course, they drive on the left and it was her right shoulder she should have glanced over before turning - a foolish lapse but, Jesus, there but for the grace of God could go anybody who travels and rides a lot.

Frank the tank

There are lies,damn lies and then statistics.

Of course experienced cyclists can be to blame for an accident, they're/we're all human and as such are fallible, regardless of our chosen mode of transport. I would say, motorists who also cycle are probably more wary when they drive. No data to back this statement, just something I would believe to be true.

Aggieboy

Statistics are no substitute for judgment. ~ Henry Clay

Drysuitdiver

Frank the tank wrote:

There are lies,damn lies and then statistics.

Of course experienced cyclists can be to blame for an accident, they're/we're all human and as such are fallible, regardless of our chosen mode of transport. I would say, motorists who also cycle are probably more wary when they drive. No data to back this statement, just something I would believe to be true.

in my case yes. but i always was a cyclist who drove rather than a driver who cycled. even in the 22 yrs of not riding !

snailracer

Drysuitdiver wrote:

...
in my case yes. but i always was a cyclist who drove rather than a driver who cycled. even in the 22 yrs of not riding !

So, you are a PIC - pedestrian in car

thesquireofbanwell

It is not possible to concentrate 100%, 100% of the time-especially when tired.
You have to anticipate and ride 'defensively' unless you are completely sure
that a road is closed to motor traffic.
There is no substitute for experience.

sloboy

Of course anyone can make a mistake and the essence of defensive riding or indeed driving is to mitigate the effect of your own and others mistakes.

And that captures the difference between probabilities and the details of any one incident. However it remains a valid assertion that "Party X is probably at fault in such and such a set of circumstances" and that's not the same as asserting that they ARE responsible.

In the age based stats above (noting that age is not the same as experience and neither are the same as mindset and attitude) you can shade in your own position in your own peer group.

An important aspect of that is your own risk taking. So a well-known sportsman has had a couple of crashes in the last few years. In one, he was (IIRC) on the wrong side of the road at the time of impact and in the other likely too close to one of his riding companions in a risk situation. Now, his profession is what we might call an extreme sport, so it's entirely to be expected that his attitude to risk is different to mine.

Hence, my observation on this topic is that bikeists can certainly be reckless or careless. However, the slower speed nature of the bike means that an experienced cyclist wishing to ride defensively can reduce their own dangerous error occurences to a very low level indeed. An experienced cyclist who's also an experienced driver even more so. And one who's not racing or training hard (so is not under physical stress) even more so again.